The United States Commission on Civil Rights will hold a public briefing on Friday, April 13, 2012 at 9:30 AM ET to hear testimony on the effectiveness of federal enforcement of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA). The briefing will take place at Commission headquarters, 624 9th St. NW, Washington, DC 20425, 5th floor conference room. Interested persons are invited to attend, and no reservation is necessary.

The trafficking of persons has been called a modern form of slavery in which most victims are female. The TVPA established an interagency task force to combat trafficking with the participation of more than a dozen agencies. The Commission has requested information from the task force and the Departments of Justice, State, and Health and Human Services, as to enforcement efforts. The Commission will also hear testimony on sex trafficking as a form of gender discrimination. The briefing will include three panels of experts.

Panel I will include Maggie Wynne, Director of the Division of Anti-Trafficking in Persons, HHS, and Greg Zoeller, Attorney General of the State of Indiana and a representative of the National Association of Attorneys General.

Panel II will include Bridgette Carr, Professor and Director of the Human Trafficking Clinic, University of Michigan Law School and member of the Michigan Human Trafficking Task Force; Salvador Cicero, Cicero Law Firm and member of the Anti-Trafficking Task Force, Cook County, Illinois; Merrill Matthews, Resident Scholar, Institute for Policy Innovation and Chairman of the Texas SAC; and Karen Hughes, Lieutenant, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, manager of the Vice Section of the Vice/Narcotics Bureau.

Panel III includes Mary Ellison, human rights lawyer and Director of Policy, Polaris Project; Amy Rassen, Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Senior Advisor, SAGE Project; Rhacel Parrenas, Professor and Chair, Sociology Department, University of Southern California and author of ‘Illicit Flirtations:  Labor, Migration, and Sex Trafficking in Tokyo’; and Tina Frundt, Executive Director/Founder of Courtney’s House and a survivor of domestic child sex trafficking.

Deaf or hearing-impaired persons who will attend the meeting and require the services of a sign language interpreter should contact Pam Dunston at (202) 376-8105 as soon as possible.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is an independent, bipartisan agency charged with monitoring federal civil rights enforcement.  Members include Chairman Martin R. Castro and Commissioners Roberta Achtenberg, Todd Gaziano, Gail Heriot, Peter Kirsanow, David Kladney, Abigail Thernstrom, and Michael Yaki. Commission meetings and briefings are open to the general public.  The Commission’s website is http://www.usccr.gov.

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After years of litigation, a class-action discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has been rejected by the Supreme Court. Over the last several years, Wal-Mart has been pushed into the spotlight by a series of lawsuits by disgruntled employees. This most recent discrimination case grew from a few disgruntled employees to one of the largest class-action lawsuits in recent memory. Three Wal-Mart associates have come together to try to sue Wal-Mart in a class-action lawsuit concerning discrimination against women in management positions.

The case reached all the way to the Supreme Court before all nine supreme justices sided with Wal-Mart’s contention that each discrimination case is unique to the store in which is allegedly  occurred and should be sought by the individual for any damages due.

This ruling is a big break for Wal-Mart, as they could have ended up paying billions of dollars to the 1.5 million female employees that have worked at the 4,300 Wal-Mart stores across the country since 1998. Theodore J. Boutrous Jr. and Theane Evangelis Kapur, the two main defense lawyers for Wal-Mart, have pointed out that there are numerous success stories of women who started out in entry-level positions and were promoted to various levels of management. Their hiring and promotion policy also specifically prohibits discrimination when determining a candidate for any position, including management.

Betty Dukes, one of the three women who began this lawsuit, argues that during her employment at Wal-Mart she witnessed male associates get promoted, while female associates with similar qualifications were passed up. In her own case, she spoke with upper management numerous times concerning her desire to be promoted, but to this day, she has still not been promoted. She was even demoted after she got change from a register while on the clock.

Dukes felt singled out by this demotion because other associates had done this before, and had never gotten in trouble. She felt that this discrimination was based on her gender, and that other women who work at Wal-Mart had experienced this discrimination as well. Now that the Supreme Court has ruled these discrimination cases must be taken up individually, if Dukes chooses to continue her case, she will have to start all over again and bring action against the specific Wal-Mart where she was employed.

Despite their strong equal opportunity policy, Wal-Mart’s hiring and promotion process is based on the discretion of the management in that particular store. Those with the responsibility of assessing candidates for different positions in their store are instructed to “not tolerate discrimination in employment, employment-related decisions, or in business dealings on the basis of race, color, ancestry, age, sex, sexual orientation, religion, disability, ethnicity, national origin, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, or any other legally protected status”

(http://ethics.walmartstores.com/IntegrityIntheWorkplace/Nondiscrimination.aspx).

In the case of the defendants, they may or may not have been discriminated against.

Although management is supposed to remain unbiased, that does not stop some individuals from breaking from policy and hiring someone based on personal preference instead of for that person’s individual qualifications. Boutrous and Evangelis Kapur have stated that Wal-Mart is not opposed to the three defendants taking their complaints against the particular stores in which the discrimination supposedly occurred. If this discrimination did happen, then the members of management responsible should be reprimanded for not following company policy and they are perfectly justified in seeking compensation.

This chapter of the case is closed, but Wal-Mart may have only opened itself to a large number of small claims by all of the individuals working at Wal-Mart that sided with Betty Dukes. In any case, this ruling will have an important impact on what constitutes a class-action lawsuit, and whether or not big businesses really can be held accountable for their actions.

Image Courtesy of  http://www.flickr.com/photos/fourstarcashiernathan/3482824061/

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An enormous lawsuit against Wal-Mart for charges of sex discrimination was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday.  At stake is whether the suit can go forward as a class action that could involve 500,000 to 1.6 million women, according to varying estimates, and potentially could cost the world’s largest retailer billions of dollars.

Women employees at the retail giant claim that men make more money and get promoted faster than their female counterparts.  One plaintiff in the suit said she was told to “doll up” and “blow the cobwebs off her make-up.”  The suit was originally filed 10 years ago and Wal-Mart has been fighting the litigation every step of the way.  It is the biggest litigation threat that the company has ever faced.

The lawsuit, however, has much further implications beyond the original claim of discrimination.  Discrimination suits are much more powerful when they are presented together as a class action suit and can often force change.  Columbia University law professor John Coffee said that the high court could bring a virtual end to employment discrimination class actions filed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, depending on how it decides the Wal-Mart case.  “Litigation brought by individuals under Title VII is just too costly,” Coffee said. “It’s either class action or nothing.”

Wal-Mart wants the Supreme Court to stop the lawsuit, even though a trial judge and the federal appeals court in San Francisco has allowed the suit to go forward.  Wal-Mart argues it includes too many women with too many different positions.  The company claims that its policies prohibit discrimination and that most management decisions are made at store and regional levels.   Theodore J. Boutrous, Wal-Mart’s California-based lawyer, said there is no evidence that women are poorly treated at Wal-Mart. “The evidence is the contrary of that,” Boutrous said.

Wal-Mart is not saying that no women face discrimination but feels that these incidents would be isolated.  “People will make errors,” said Gisel Ruiz, Wal-Mart’s executive vice president for people, as the company calls its human resources unit. “People are people.”

The suit, citing what are now dated figures from 2001, contends that women are poorly represented among managers, holding just 14 percent of store manager positions compared with more than 80 percent of lower-ranking supervisory jobs that are paid by the hour. Wal-Mart responds that women in its retail stores made up two-thirds of all employees and two-thirds of all managers in 2001.

A ruling is expected by late June in the hearing.

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